The Other Half
by QuietLittleVoices
Summary: Young love. A promise. Break up, make up, and be alright again. ((Merthur Modern AU))


**A/N: **I honestly have no explanation for this.

* * *

Merlin went first, because Arthur was always a weakling. Nervously, he sat in the tattoo artists chair as the woman preps the needle, popping her bubble gum. She's wearing a tank top that reveals her brightly coloured arms, and her black dreads are tied up with an elastic band. Eventually, they will both forget her name, but they'll never forget her face.

After making sure he was ready, she set to work, drawing the small but intricate half-circle on his ring finger. It took fifteen minutes, but then it was over. Merlin flexed his finger experimentally and grinned when it didn't hurt as much as he'd expected.

Merlin had teased,_ You're turn, prat,_ pushing Arthur towards the chair.

The blonde stumbled slightly and fell in. Arthur agreed,_ Now for the other half_, with a shaky smile. Merlin kissed him before the woman started her work, for courage, he'd say later. Arthur would reject the sentiment on grounds that he didn't need courage, but he wouldn't fool anyone.

On the way out of the shop, they twine their fingers together. The halves of the coin slot in next to each other perfectly, creating a whole. A promise.

When they go away to university, they get an apartment together. A flat, really. It's small, but it's home. The floor creaks and the sinks leak, there are cracks in the tile that look like a map of the London underground, but it's got _character_, Merlin says, proudly, as soon as he finishes his first tour of the one bedroom flat.

Arthur had laughed and shook his head. _It's a death trap_, he'd replied, but Merlin had pretended not to hear him and placed a bid on it anyway. Of course they won; no one else wanted it. So they moved their meager belongings into the ratty old place, and Arthur bought two cans of green paint. They sat on a tarp in one corner, with a tray and roller and good intentions, for the entire year they live there. There's paint dripping down their sides, a testament that they'd once been opened, and there's dried paint in the tray. The corner has a smatter of green stripes, but the rest of the room remained ugly maroon.

At first, they don't paint because they're busy with school. But then it's time for holidays, and they don't paint because they both go their separate ways to spend time with family.

After that, things start to go downhill in the apartment. Looking back, neither are sure how it started, but they stop communicating. There were days that they didn't speak to each other at all, and that turned into days they didn't even _see_ each other. It was a natural, slow rot of love.

The screaming matches started when the rest had rotted away, and they ended when Arthur packed his things and left. It was August, a year after they'd bought the apartment. Merlin smashed everything in the apartment that was theirs, threw the paint so it stained the walls and the couch and the floor and himself and then sat down in the bathroom and cried. The stayed in the apartment for two more months to finish up the lease and then moved out, back home to his mother who greeted him with cakes.

Arthur went home to his disapproving father. Separately, they continued their schooling, and they managed to keep away from each other. For seven years.

The coffee shop is small and stuffy. It isn't anything like a place Arthur would normally go, too pretentious and arty, but it is between his apartment and the office and he is already running late.

Arthur turned from the order counter in a haste, and ran into the man behind him, squishing the latters' drink between them and spilling it over both of them. Arthur almost started yelling until he looks into those familiar blue eyes. Instead, a smile spreads onto his face. "Merlin," he greets, breathlessly.

His name is echoed back at him and he feels like laughing, because he'd missed that voice so much, and that unruly brown hair and those ridiculous ears. "Can I buy you another drink?"

Arthur misses his meeting that morning. And when, over coffee, Merlin says, "I'm sorry," it seals the deal. He knows he's going to miss a lot of early morning meetings in the future, if it means he'll get Merlin again.

"Don't apologize," Arthur says, reaching across the table. "We're both to blame."

With a grin that Arthur can't help but return, Merlin laces their fingers together. Their coin is whole again for the first time in what seems like forever. It's a promise, and this time, they intend to keep it.


End file.
